The Criticism of the New Testament. Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
in the Institutes and in the Digest of Justinian the first paragraph is always cited as pr. (i.e. principium, προοίμιον, Preface), and what we should regard as the second paragraph is numbered as the first, and so on throughout the whole work65.
The τίτλοι in St. Matthew amount to sixty-eight, in St. Mark to forty-eight, in St. Luke to eighty-three, in St. John to eighteen. This mode of division, although not met with in the Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts, is found in the Codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi of the fifth century, and in the Codex Nitriensis of the sixth, each of which has tables of the τίτλοι prefixed to the several Gospels: but the Codices Alexandrinus, Rossanensis, and Dublinensis of St. Matthew, and that portion of the purple Cotton fragment which is in the Vatican, exhibit them in their usual position, at the top and bottom of the pages. Thus it appears that they were too generally diffused in the fifth century not to have originated at an earlier period; although we must concede that the κεφάλαιον spoken of by Clement of Alexandria (Stromat. i) when quoting Dan. xii. 12, or by Athanasius (contra Arium) on Act. ii, and the Capitulum mentioned by Tertullian (ad Uxorem ii. 2) in reference to 1 Cor. vii. 12, contain no certain allusions to any specific divisions of the sacred text, but only to the particular paragraphs or passages in which their citations stand. Except that the contrary habit has grown inveterate66, it were much to be desired that the term τίτλοι should be applied to these longer divisions, at least in the Gospels; but since usage has affixed the term κεφάλαια to the larger chapters and sections to the smaller, and τίτλοι only to the subjects or headings of the former, it would be useless to follow any other system of names.
3. The Ammonian Sections were not constructed, like the Vatican divisions and the τίτλοι, for the purpose of easy reference, or distributed like them according to the breaks in the sense, but for a wholly different purpose. So far as we can ascertain, the design of Tatian's Harmony was simply to present to Christian readers a single connected history of our Lord, by taking from the four Evangelists indifferently whatsoever best suited his purpose67. As this plan could scarcely be executed without omitting some portions of the sacred text, it is not surprising that Tatian, possibly without any evil intention, should have incurred the grave charge of mutilating Holy Scripture68. A more scholar-like and useful attempt was subsequently made by Ammonius of Alexandria, early in the third century [a.d. 220], who, by the side of St. Matthew's Gospel, which he selected as his standard, arranged in parallel columns, as it would seem, the corresponding passages of the other three Evangelists, so as to exhibit them all at once to the reader's eye; St. Matthew in his proper order, the rest as the necessity of abiding by St. Matthew's order prescribed. This is the account given by the celebrated Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, the Church historian, who in the fourth century, in his letter to Carpianus, described his own most ingenious system of Harmony, as founded on, or at least as suggested by, the labours of Ammonius69. It has been generally thought that the κεφάλαια, of which St. Matthew contains 355, St. Mark 23670, St. Luke 342, St. John 232, in all 1165, were made by Ammonius for the purpose of his work, and they have commonly received the name of the Ammonian sections: but this opinion was called in question by Bp. Lloyd (Nov. Test. Oxon. 1827, Monitum, pp. viii-xi), who strongly urges that, in his Epistle to Carpianus, Eusebius not only refrains from ascribing these numerical divisions to Ammonius (whose labours in this particular, as once seemed the case with Tatian's, must in that case be deemed to have perished utterly), but he almost implies that they had their origin at the same time with his own ten canons, with which they are so intimately connected71. That they were essential to Eusebius' scheme is plain enough; their place in Ammonius' parallel Harmony is not easily understood, unless indeed (what is nowhere stated, but rather the contrary) he did not set the passages from the other Gospels at full length by the side of St. Matthew's, but only these numerical references to them72.
There is, however, one ground for hesitation before we ascribe the sections, as well as the canons, to Eusebius; namely, that not a few ancient manuscripts (e.g. Codd. FHY) contain the former, while they omit the latter. Of palimpsests indeed it might be said with reason, that the rough process which so nearly obliterated the ink of the older writing, would completely remove the coloured paint (κιννάβαρις, vermilion, prescribed by Eusebius, though blue or green is occasionally found) in which the canons were invariably noted; hence we need not wonder at their absence from the Codices Ephraemi, Nitriensis (R), Dublinensis (Z), Codd. IWb of Tischendorf, and the Wolfenbüttel fragments (PQ), in all which the sections are yet legible in ink. The Codex Sinaiticus contains both; but Tischendorf decidedly pronounces them to be in a later hand. In the Codex Bezae too, as well as the Codex Cyprius (K), even the Ammonian sections, without the canons, are by later hands, though the latter has prefixed the list or table of the canons. Of the oldest copies the Cod. Alex. (A), Tischendorf's Codd. WaΘ, the Cotton frag. (N), and Codd. Beratinus and Rossanensis alone contain both the sections and the canons. Even in more modern cursive books the latter are often deficient, though the former are present. This peculiarity we have observed in Burney 23, in the British Museum, of the twelfth century, although the Epistle to Carpianus stands at the beginning; in a rather remarkable copy of about the twelfth century, in the Cambridge University Library (Mm. 6. 9, Scholz Evan. 440), in which, however, the table of canons but not the Epistle to Carpianus precedes; in the Gonville and Caius Gospels of the twelfth century (Evan. 59), and in a manuscript of about the thirteenth century at Trinity College, Cambridge (B. x. 17)73. These facts certainly seem to indicate that in the judgement of critics and transcribers, whatever that judgement may be deemed worth, the Ammonian sections had a previous existence to the Eusebian canons, as well as served for an independent purpose74.
In his letter to Carpianus, their inventor clearly yet briefly describes the purpose of his canons, ten in number. The first contains a list of seventy-one places in which all the four Evangelists have a narrative, discourse, or saying in common: the second of 111 places in which the three Matthew, Mark, Luke agree: the third of twenty-two places common to Matthew, Luke, John: the fourth of twenty-six passages common to Matthew, Mark, John: the fifth of eighty-two places in which the two Matthew, Luke coincide: the sixth of forty-seven places wherein Matthew, Mark agree: the seventh of seven places common to Matthew and John: the eighth of fourteen places common to Luke and Mark: the ninth of twenty-one places in which Luke and John agree: the tenth of sixty-two passages of Matthew, twenty-one of Mark, seventy-one of Luke, and ninety-seven of John which have no parallels, but are peculiar to a single Evangelist. Under each of the 1165 so-named Ammonian sections, in its proper place in the margin of a manuscript, is put in coloured ink the number of that Eusebian canon to which it refers. On looking for that section in the proper table or canon, there will also be found the parallel place or places in the other Gospels, each indicated by its proper numeral, and so readily searched out. A single example will serve to explain our meaning. In the facsimile of the Cotton fragment (Plate v. No. 14), in the margin of the passage (John xv. 20) we see ΡΛΘ over Γ, where ΡΑΘ (139) is the proper section of St. John, Γ (3) the number of the canon. On searching the third Eusebian table we read MT. [symbol], Λ. νη, ΙΩ. ρλθ and thus we learn that the first clause of John xv. 20 is parallel in sense to the ninetieth ([symbol]) section of St. Matthew (x. 24), and to the fifty-eighth (νη) of St. Luke (vi. 40). The advantage of such a system of parallels to the exact study of the Gospels is too evident to need insisting on.
4. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles are also divided into chapters (κεφάλαια), in design precisely the same as the κεφάλαια or τίτλοι of the Gospels, and nearly like them in length. Since there is no trace of these chapters in the two great Codices Alexandrinus and Ephraemi, of the fifth century (which yet exhibit the τίτλοι, the sections, and one of them the canons), it seems reasonable to assume that they are of later date. They are sometimes connected with the name of Euthalius, deacon of Alexandria, afterwards Bishop of Sulci75, whom we have already spoken of as the reputed author of Scriptural stichometry (above, p. 53). We learn, however, from Euthalius' own Prologue to his edition of St. Paul's Epistles (a.d. 458,) that the “summary of the chapters” (and consequently the numbers of the chapters themselves) was taken from the work of “one of our wisest and pious fathers76,” i.e. some Bishop that he does not wish to particularize, whom Mill (Proleg. N. T. § 907) conjectures to be Theodore of Mopsuestia, who lay under the censure of the Church. Soon after77 the publication of St. Paul's Epistles, on the